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Amazon Powers Nasdaq's New Cloud Computing Platform

Nasdaq OMX (NASDAQ:
NDAQ
) has announced FinQloud, a new data management offering designed
exclusively for the financial services industry. FinQloud will be
powered by Amazon (NASDAQ:
AMZN
) Web Services, the firm's massive cloud computing division.
FinQloud has been
described
as a platform for financial services applications that "provides
efficient management and storage of financial data that helps
market participants streamline operations and meet regulatory
compliance requirements without making costly capital expenditures
for their underlying infrastructure." The platform will combine
Amazon Web Services' cloud infrastructure with Nasdaq OMX's
experience "in providing technology and advisory services to
exchanges, regulators and broker-dealers that operate within a
complex global regulatory framework."

Nasdaq OMX created FinQloud at a time when financial regulations
are
still
being reformed
. The company said that its new service may be used by a variety of
financial firms that need to manage data -- not just from Nasdaq
OMX but from any number of sources.

FinQloud promises to offer customers a secure, industry-only
cloud platform that is designed to "immediately reduce technology
burdens, aid in compliance and refocus resources on revenue driving
operations." The company said that these benefits are made possible
because of the scalability of a fully managed cloud solution, which
includes hosting, virtualization, and infrastructure data
management.

During the introductory phase of the service, FinQloud will
provide customers with two solutions -- Regulatory Records
Retention (R3) and Self Service Reporting (SSR). The former is
geared toward broker-dealers, as it will provide them with a
storage and retrieval tool designed to help meet U.S. Securities
and Exchange Commission Rule 17a-4 record retention obligations "at
substantially reduced cost and complexity." Likewise, SSR will
enable broker-dealers to perform "fast, on-demand analysis and
reporting on their stored trade data."

Considering the problems that the industry has faced with
glitches and other errors, investors might wonder how Nasdaq OMX
plans to protect itself going forward. The company said that in
order to meet the "stringent operational and regulatory security
requirements of the financial services industry and to protect data
integrity," every connection to FinQloud will pass through a
"rigorous encryption key management system" that is scheduled to be
available in the near future. This encryption key management system
will be housed in private Nasdaq OMX data centers before directly
connecting to Amazon Web Services, the two companies announced.

Eric Noll, who serves as the executive VP of Transaction
Services at Nasdaq OMX in the U.S. and U.K., said that by working
with Amazon, the company is demonstrating its "commitment to
provide innovative solutions to the financial services industry at
large."

"FinQloud, as a protected warehouse for regulated data, fosters
efficient and reliable markets for investors," Noll said in a
company release
. "We will continue to work with AWS on cloud technology offerings
that foster transparency and improve the quality of our
markets."

"Financial services customers have unique regulatory
requirements for many of their IT projects, and high expectations
for operational performance," added Andy Jassy, Senior Vice
President of Amazon Web Services. "With the strong reliability, low
cost, unmatched platform capabilities, and agility that AWS
provides, NASDAQ OMX's FinQloud offerings, R3 and SSR, are
tailor-made for AWS and cloud computing. Storing and retrieving
data can be done quickly, easily, and inexpensively.

"And with the scalability, cost-effectiveness, and flexibility
of the cloud, customers can quickly conduct analysis and reporting
regardless of the amount of data. With FinQloud, we're pleased that
NASDAQ OMX will be able to combine their expertise in financial
markets and regulatory compliance with the enterprise-class
capabilities of the AWS Cloud."

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